He'd been dreaming about sunflowers for some reason. Bright golden rings of petals that melted down in honey drops. They were beautiful and he couldn't stop himself from reaching out, only to have the drops burn where then stuck to his flesh, honey going richer, darker, melting into blood...
“Skuh!” Eyes snapped wide and saw wooden beams overhead. The steady hammer of rain scattered the odd vision of bleeding flowers and facts reestablished his reality within a blink or three. Rogers, mud, ouch, Lassie, radio. Got it. Best nutshelling eveeer...
He had a few moments of bland numbness before irritants began to trickle through his limbs. Itchy wet was the first one. His clothes had soaked the couch and he felt cocooned in soggy cloth. Freezing was the next, quickly overriding wet and was profound enough that he honestly wondered how he could have possibly noticed the waterlogged surroundings before anything else. Pain, blazing far – far into the front of the pack was the sensation that he'd forgotten about until he tried to move.
Grunt, hiss, and a cacophony of sounds usually found among barely weaned blood hounds, he forced his plank of a spine to relax flat. Falling asleep hunched over his legs was going right up there with top ten sleepy time no-nos; along with “in a bowl of jerk chicken” and “in the middle of...” insert activity of choice.
If he was expecting to pass out again it wasn't happening soon enough. Most likely his teeth were chattering too loud but it could also have been the crew coming off their lunch break and resuming their excavation of his inner ear. Dizziness was a pain even lying down and the warm glut of nausea that came with it added a twist of cruel to his misery.
He did not just hear a mouse scrabble across the floor.
Shawn winced and pulled trailing fingers off the hardwood and wrapped his arm across his chest while scanning his three foot bubble for weaponry. Damn, not even a rubber band. Furred and white and trapped behind glass they were acceptable and even cute. Gray and rabid and hungry for his digits, though...
The burst of lightning was so close, so loud, that it rattled the windows in their frames and lifted the small hairs across Shawn's forearms. He could practically taste the electrical charge that hummed in the air and felt some guilt smudging his gratefulness for being indoors. Granted, the guilt didn't last when he heard the back door shove into its frame – Lassy was quite fleet of foot now that he wasn't shackled to a limping anchor.
“You bring back any chips?” Question and glance ended in the whispered finish of his hunger-laden inquiry. Wet drops slid along dull metal and fell from the muzzle of the weapon held steady despite the shaking of the man behind it.
Rogers beamed at his guest.
“Why did you have to sit there? That was my favorite couch.”
And he pulled the trigger.
After the third time dragging his limbs from the gouging grip of nature – foliage all BDSM on every piece of bare flesh – he slowed his gallop to a fast jog. Still not enough light to see more than five feet through the downpour, the sun taking its sweet time rolling out of bed while his flashlight reflected on the sheet of rain – throwing a hazy cone into the black and offering itself as little more than a placebo against the dark.
First speck of luck all night that Carlton hadn't met an armed Rogers on the way to his car. Still, luck might be just as fleeting as the saying went if he couldn't keep the wild grope of spindly branches from debasing his person – already a line of welts to do a leather ensconced dominatrix proud had risen, red and throbbing, along the bulge of his jaw from that last battle through greenery.
He'd nearly lost his weapon to the trees before tucking it in his holster – at least he'd retained that during Rogers slap-dash theft of his property earlier. Why he couldn't have taken that extra second to snag the bottle of Advil from the glove compartment – Spencer better be in imminent danger of ventilating – the pounding in his skull so fierce he'd have traded his piece for a bottle of meds. Preferably laced with enough Vicodin to drop a steer.
Speaking of cattle, he'd munch Bessy from the hooves up if one of those walking hamburger factories crossed his path.
A roar of foul language accompanied another downward plunge as his soles skidded on the soaked and rotted leaves. Mouthful of forest floor muffled the diatribe and offered up the meager salad as an appetizer to his hunger.
The next upward climb was a recollection of every injury he'd earned on this “simple reconnaissance” come reenactment of Midnight Run. Limp added to his lope and his state of mind, while rarely petulant with regards to his job, latched onto the curse of his circumstances and the means of its entrapment that had landed him in his personal hell.
He'd never lost his perspective regarding Spencer's standing with the department – time spend slapping his sneakers across the marble floor of the station did not an officer make, now or ever. But even so, he could admit some loss of better judgement born of forced familiarity; years of putting up with antic after side-show after parade of the ridiculous all devised to added that spice of buffoonery to detective work – Carlton had never been a fan of Pink Panther films and starring as Jacques Clouseau to Spencer's Charles Lytton was as grating as it was humiliating.
Gunshots, two of them tight together, made for a stop that wobbled on the tail end of his momentum – head tilt and frozen stance to place the location. Lack of echo meant the sound was dead before his feet had ceased crunching against the ground. Still, while he stood with his ears cocked and his hands slightly spread, the flat clap of the weapon cut through the rain once more. Two shots, three, four in rapid succession and while still a confusion of exact placement he'd at least narrowed the direction.
Spencer was outside and heading away from the cabin – Rogers firing so often doubtless from the lead his quarry must have gained.
But Spencer was already injured and working on an infection to boot. Whatever head start he had now wasn't going to last. However, whether or not Rogers got off a lucky shot, the exposure alone would be as good as a bullet.
Slicking a hand down his face – a move that cleared his eyes for all of three seconds, Carlton automatically felt for his weapon – reassured to find it still tucked in a pocket of worn leather. Spitting blood from his lip – earned during his last encounter with an ill-tempered Douglas-fir, he altered course for the most direct path to the handgun's reports.
And if luck chose that day to be generous, Spencer would still be alive by the time he battled his way through the gigantic mass of greenery that constituted his chosen roadway.
Because, by the time he made it through this tree-hugger's wet dream, he wanted to be the one to shoot that smarmy little twit himself.
Crouched beneath the wide base of a pine, Shawn drew in hard, frozen gasps and kept his eyes locked back the way he'd come. The downpour was an added cover for sound as well as visibility; an advantage he wasn't sure he had for long. Rogers had a gun, a flashlight, and a slowly lightening sky. Of course, Longmore had had those things too and Shawn had eluded him for nearly two hours. Correction; he'd eluded him completely before blundering all newborn calf right into their grabby mitts with a giant banner stapled to his forehead reading “1 free hostage – limited time offer”.
Or was it better to say “evil clutches”? No, that sounded too Phantom Menace.
The back of his neck still burned where the bullet had scorched mid-dive from the couch. There was no way his speed had saved him, lightning fast though he may be. He'd just lucked into a killer whose aim wasn't quite as noteworthy as his moniker. The shots that had followed had been nearly as close as he'd scrambled for the door – one of them managing to clip his wrist before he'd made it past the threshold. There was an irony that the half of a cuff still locked in place had likely saved his hand. The bullet had grooved flesh before striking the metal and angling back into the room.
The shivers wouldn't stop. Trying to keep his teeth together so they wouldn't chatter had only led to a bit lip so he'd given up on that pretty quick.
Still no Rogers. Or Hammertime for that matter. Wait, that wasn't right... Whatever, a break was a break and Shawn hadn't had anything to eat or drink since the gas station he'd insisted Lassie stop at on their way to the cabin. Water was trickling down through the branches of his current cover and the clear drops blunting the needle tips inches from his face were more tempting than Eva Longoria in a string bikini.
His left hand tucked close to his body as he reached for the nearest branch. Knocking against several others, he shuddered as an icy trickle raced down the back of his neck – stinging where it skimmed over the powder burn.
Still, he got his branch, quirking a hungry smile as he eased the water sprinkled prickles towards his face. His tongue lapped out for the drops as his shaking hand began to scatter them. He caught a few but it wasn't really thirst quenching. Not really at all.
But it was all he was going to get as a sudden glare of light blinded directly in his face. He threw himself right as a thunder blast gouged a hole in his tree. He didn't try to pinpoint where Rogers was standing. The light lurched after his lunge and he grasped branches and yanked himself away. Thorny wood scraped his face and neck as another gunshot burst a fountain of dirt into his eyes. His crawl was frantic as he rolled himself to the other side of the tree.
He breath was too hard for the cold, pulling the chill far into his lungs and triggering a surge of coughs. There was blood soaking down his leg but he still pivoted and forced his knees down so he could grasp the tree. Hooking his grip into the sticky bark, he hitched and tugged himself upright – only to fall against the trunk with his eyes screwed tight at the stagger of pain that ricocheted through his leg.
Branches snapped beyond him as Rogers plowed through the brush. Was he actually running? The dumbfounded gape was followed by a splinter of resurged panic that came with the knowledge that he had nowhere to go except deeper into the woods.
Slaps and stings of needle bristled wood whipped his cheeks raw. Twists of brush wrapped around his feet, stumbling every step that tried to run. Rogers was right behind him, no less hampered but far more equipped and fired every few seconds between falling over small trees and crashing through branches.
The wild darts of the flashlight skewed his visibility and flip flopped dark and light, so it was almost expected that he'd miss important details – like that stump. Shin met solid wood and Shawn cartwheeled over the broken off tree fragment to crash into the less solid but more prickly cluster of wild rose bushes.
Rogers was having an equal amount of luck by the sound of things so Shawn felt he hadn't lost anything other than more flesh from his legs and arms as he ripped free from the blossom covered booby trap. He could barely keep his feet as he stumbled towards the closest thing resembling a path. The rain pouring over his face wasn't helping as he tried to keep to the road more traveled.
Earth exploded between his feet in the next moment coupled with a gunshot that sounded inches away. Shawn yelped and made a dive to the left to avoid the follow-up round that would have buried in his spine. His leg wasn't buying into the heroic attempts at self preservation and buckled the moment he touched down. Any sound of pain that could have resulted from the structural integrity loss was overshadowed by the lightning above and the downpour below.
“No place left to go!” Rogers had wonderful enunciation to make himself heard over the kaboom of thunder – guy should have gone into product endorsement.
Shawn twisted to sit on his ass and brace his palms on the soaked leaves. Rogers was just standing there – watching him. Smiling. Since when had warm fuzzies started to go hand in hand with homicide? What was it with the Care Bear brand of killers? Crab crawl a sparse three inches back confirmed what Giddy McTwitcherson had just told him when fingers curled into empty space. A scramble as his upper body tried to swan dive into the nothingness and he realized, heart grinding to a stop, where he was.
Rogers kept the gun steady as he walked close enough to brush toe tips with the shivering man on the ground. His grin stretched the tensile strength of his lips as he shouted through the torrent.
“It really is a cryin' shame! After all your hard work to get out of there... looks like you'll be buried in that pit after all!” Missive of ill tidings delivered, he centered the weapon on Shawn's chest and fired.
The thunderclap masked the gunshot and Shawn's body jerked before folding in upon itself – massive hemorrhaging mixed with an adrenaline surge certainly the reason he was feeling no pain. In the following seconds of impending death, he also realized what else he wasn't feeling. Palms flattening broad across his chest, he explored every curve of muscle beneath his sodden clothes – unbroken flesh wet only with the driving rain and sweat met his search. Shock of being shot eclipsed to the shock of being spared and he managed to lift his slack mouthed stare to the stilled figure staring back.
Rogers fired again and Shawn flinched, but the only sound above the rain was the dry smack of the firing pin. Rogers was out of ammunition – the full clip emptied during his pursuit.
The wash of relief at still breathing clashed with the dislike for a criminal that dared sour the name of a childhood hero and Shawn couldn't help the laugh that brayed out at Rogers failure to kill him.
Repeated trigger pulls were only a threat to the firing mechanism of the gun. Shawn was still chuckling as Rogers pitched the gun at him, a fast duck saving him from another bruise. He was just beginning to straighten when, belting out a yell, Rogers charged.
“Woah, sto...!” The collision into his body stole both words and air and the burr-like grip Shawn had on the lip of the chasm was lost to him as they flipped over the edge – the blackness opening up below to once more swallow them down its muddy gullet.
In desperation, Shawn's fingers clawed out towards the bank as he fell.
And in a jolt that tore at every joint from wrist to spine, his body stopped in mid air.